Lucky Dog Audio Post

Another in the "Recent Work" catagory:

This spot makes me smile. Friendly VO, nice music and sound effects work that celebrates the playful vibe of the visuals. After trying several approaches on the car sound, we decided that the toy-box look needed a toy-box sound. Foley lip-buzzing by yours truly, modded with a "bubbly" vocoder effect.

For more, (and certainly more coherent,) behind the scenes commentary, see our friends at Third Degree.

Here's a new radio spot we produced last week that's airing in Nashville. It's kind of weird. Especially the opening chord. I think that has something to do with pandiatonic harmony. Anyway, the whole concept behind the dialogue is some kind of inside joke. I don't get it. Apparently there was an invasion in the 1960s that I was never told about.

Maybe I'll ask Bumpercar to elaborate.

On Tuesday, the Energy Efficiency Arkansas campaign we worked on last month officially launched.

R&B group lends song, images to Ark. energy ads - BusinessWeek via kwout

That's right, BusinessWeek, we got to record ARCHIE BELL AND THE DRELLS! Archie Bell and the Drells

Archie Bell and the Drells and the Scott

For this project, we recorded all of Archie Bell's voice overs for the radio and television spots (summer and winter versions) as well as all of Archie Bell and the Drells's vocals for the music bed. You can watch the television spots on the Energy Efficiency Arkansas website. Here's the radio we produced (also featuring Paul Manutes in the role of the Archie Bell and the Drells superfan):

Listen to Summer Radio

Listen to Winter Radio

Here's more news of Lucky Dog award winning work. Check out this ADDY award winning video we mixed for Zehnder Communications last year.

LSUHSC Important Work from LSU Health Sciences Center on Vimeo.

Plus Zehnder won ADDY's for Edgen Murray (web animation) and Louisiana Public Health Institute's smoking cessation campaign (radio). Both projects received the Lucky Dog Audio Post touch (not to be confused with the Tellington Touch).

PS. Here's a couple of samples from the LPHI radio campaign:

Quit With Us

Helen

Looks like our buddies at Third Degree totally cleaned up this year at the Oklahoma City ADDYs with their Buck the Norm campaign!! Buck yeah! Buck the Norm won Best Interactive, Best Broadcast and Best In Show!!! Whoo hoo!

We had a lot of fun working on this project. Besides finding a unique piece of music we also got to get laid-back with the voice over. Plus the script required some quirky sound effects which we pulled from our SFX vault (the clapping toy monkey and the film projector clicks and hums) as well as from the voice actor himself ("yarg" and "argg" and "Bada dah Da da Da DA"). This was mos def a fun one. Buckin rock!

Buck the Norm - For more funny videos, click here

Boondogs | Video Flyer from Boondogs on Vimeo.

Here's a little Lucky Dog experiment in motion graphics for an upcoming Boondogs show.

Photo stills by Jason Masters.

Here's some recent work for Third Degree featuring a voice over by yours truly.

Yarg!

It seems like we've been getting more and more requests for voice talent that sound "real" and "not announcery." Of course, that can mean different things to different people. Here's what it meant to one mad genius client of ours.

Listen to "Keywords"

Photo: T. Bllard Leseman, 1983

My first band was called Modern Art. As you can see in the above flyer, we were very serious about being a band. First off, we had a look - berets. Yep. We all wore berets. You know, the kind of hats that Claude Monet used to wear. I guess if we had really wanted to sell the idea we would have also worn smocks. But smocks aren't as cool as berets. Also, if you take another look at our flyer you will see that we knew EXACTLY what to do when posing for a professional band picture (i.e. have everyone look in a different direction). I'm sad to say that this is the only flyer I have left from those halycon days when me and my band mates would stand in a group, put our hands in our pockets, and stare in different directions. Yes. Those were the days.

Conceptually I'd say Modern Art was a new wave band though at the time we thought we were punk. Somehow we'd heard the term "punk" and we knew it was cool. The bands we admired were U2 and The Police. We thought those bands were punk. A year after this picture was taken, I purchased "Never Mind the Bollocks" and realized how un-punk they/we were.

It's fun to think back on those early, floundering days of being a band. Not only were we all trying to figure out how to play our individual instruments but we were also trying to figure out how to play our instruments together as a group. At one rehearsal I remember us working out the particular sections to a certain song. I decided that the drummer (pictured center in the plaid jacket) and me (far right) should come up with some visual cues for playing certain parts. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: When I nod my head once, hit your ride cymbal.

Drummer: Ok.

Me: And when I nod my head twice, hit your crash cymbal.

Drummer: Ok.

Me: Ready?

Drummer: Almost. I've got one question.

Me: Yeah?

Drummer: What head-moves are you going to make when I need to hit the hi hats?

Good question. I am surprised that I'm still not suffering from whiplash.

What reminds me of all this is a viral piece we created recently for OKGazette.com. Brian Winkeler approached us about creating a piece of music that could be "sloppy and garage-y and fun." He wanted something punk-ish and also something juvenile to accompany a puerile video featuring various shots of people getting "racked." Yeah! I know. How great is that for an assignment! Obviously we were totally excited. Plus, he didn't need a song as much as he needed riffs. Sloppy, choppy, I'm-just-learning-how-to-play-my-instrument type riffs. So we assembled the troops, mic-ed up the drums, and cranked our amps up to 11. Total fun! Basically the session became method acting with instruments. We picked a key (A) and played the most bone-headed riff in the book. It was all about channeling that "my first band" experience. For me, it was Modern Art Revisited, except that Modern Art sounded much much more accomplished than this:

Oklahoma Gazette RACK!!

Our recent work for CJRW and the Arkansas State Police Highway Safety Office features the voice of a GPS unit that starts giving it's driver a little bit more than simple driving directions. This spot stars Kelly Klemonlin as the voice of the GPS, Tracy Thibodeaux as the announcer, and the sounds of a Garmin GPS.

Listen to GPS :30 (Garmin version)

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A previous version of the spot, mentioned here and here, was mixed with the sounds of a Magellan GPS unit.

Listen to GPS :30 (Magellan version)

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